hi gang I am new here so excuse me if this is in the wrong place or has been asked and answered. We are looking at buying a tandem axle expanda and going up the Gibb River Road with it. What would be a suggestion for tyre pressures on the dirt sections? Thank you.
Suspension Tyre pressures
- Thread starter Ric
- Start date
28 psi. If it's really bad corrugated roads down to 22psi but at these pressures you need to be careful of side wall punctures and your speed.
Agree with this, but would add the speed also needs to be adjusted to not above 80k's with the lower pressures
We came across the great central road (not quite the same but some perspective for you) a couple weeks ago (1150kms of dirt) I ran the tugs tyres at 34psi ( KO2 bfg) and the van at 35psi (Kuhmo AT's 109T rated) . I estimate our average speed to be 65-70kph, some was 85kph when it was smooth and the worst was 40 kph but was only small pockets of that on the N.T side.
The Shaily rocks concerned me with side wall damage more than anything.
We simple drove to the conditions but it took a hundred kms to find some rhythm and switch onto reading the conditions but once you are going it was pretty cruisy.
We were up at the GVM limit of the Prado and ATM of the van so I was mindful of running too lower pressures.
Cheers Max.
The Shaily rocks concerned me with side wall damage more than anything.
We simple drove to the conditions but it took a hundred kms to find some rhythm and switch onto reading the conditions but once you are going it was pretty cruisy.
We were up at the GVM limit of the Prado and ATM of the van so I was mindful of running too lower pressures.
Cheers Max.
After doing Cape GRR Oodnadatta etc I would fit tyres with strong sidewalls such as BFG's (where sidewalls don't bulge as much) and watch the sidewalls when you drop the pressure because thats where you will get damage that can't be repaired -- you can plug the tread region. I asked a local at Ellenbrae Station on GRR and he regularly travelled to Kunnunurra -- he used normal road pressures 40+psi this is a rocky rough section. There's a youtube video of tandem panda on GRR.
Look at tyre pressure monitoring system -- Tyredog turned out to be complete dog - last trip with Masten system was very good - I had to mount the receiver unit behind me to pick up van tyres - but you could get the range extender.
The thing thats never mentioned is drop your pressure a bit at a time to go with the terrain, too low is just as bad a too high, when you drop pressure you must also drop off the speed, if you drop to 25psi you don't go faster than 50kph less is best, with low pressure the chance of also getting dirt into the tyre bead and causing a flat is great, go fast with too low pressure and the tyre can roll off the rim, so drop down pressure a little and speed a lot will usually see you thru.
If using a TPMsystem you also have tyre temperature which indicates if you are at the right pressure for your speed and load -- a rise of around 4 deg from cold is about right if more then pressure too low for speed and vice versa.
That doesn't apply when on corrugated dirt roads as your trying to balance the shock load, it's one thing that technology can't cover as too many variables, a seat of the pants thing really depends on road condition, the load of van/tug, tyre type and speed ,all these are negated though if the driver is an idiot of which there are many.
We did the gibb last year. we put all tyres down to 26psi once we hit the dirt. When cold we checked what they were, and they were at 23psi. Did the lot, including mitchell's.....without van, and never had any issues. Every 'dip' though we slowed to 20/30km/h instead of the 70 - 80km/h that the campers did. Funny how we saw alot of trailers, campers and cars with broken bits and popped tyres.